Tennent’s Vital set to rock city from today

It has been a year in preparation, and workmen have been toiling on site for weeks.

Later today the gates will be flung open at the first of the annual two-day Tennent’s Vital concerts, drawing a huge stream of revellers to south Belfast across today and Sunday.

Jim Cummings enjoys a Tennents Vital Cupcake.

Though smaller than last year, when it ran over three days, it is still expected to bring 50,000 concert-goers to Boucher Road playing fields over both days combined.

Yesterday workmen were putting the finishing touches to the rigging as ominous grey clouds hovered overhead.

But by this evening the gigantic open venue will be heaving with gig-goers as Bastille and headline act The Killers take to the stage – with the Met Office predicting that the weather from 7pm onwards should be sunny.

Though it has been running since 2002, is the third year the concert has been held at its present location.

The organisers said 400 stewards will be on duty for security, and pledged that there will be no repeat of the 2012 sound fiasco, when residents as far away as Comber had complained that they could hear the concert from their homes.

Last year they re-aligned the stage to solve the problem, and spokeswoman Sarah Shimmons said that it should present no issues again this year.

This website and its associated newspaper adheres to the Independent Press Standards Organisation's Editors' Code of Practice.
If you have a complaint about editorial content which relates to inaccuracy or intrusion, then contact the
Editor by clicking here.

If you remain dissatisfied with the response provided then you can contact the IPSO by
clicking here.

Belfast Newsletter provides news, events and sport features from the Belfast area. For the best up to date information relating to Belfast and the surrounding areas visit us at Belfast Newsletter regularly or bookmark this page.

For you to enjoy all the features of this website Belfast Newsletter requires permission to use cookies.

Find Out More ▼

What is a Cookie?

What is a Flash Cookie?

Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?

About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.

This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.

Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.

The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:

Revenue Science ►

A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Google Ads ►

Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.

Digital Analytics ►

This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.

Dart for Publishers ►

This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.

ComScore ►

ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.

Local Targeting ►

Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.

Grapeshot ►

We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.

Subscriptions Online ►

Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.

Add This ►

Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.